On Your Way To Becoming An Internet Marketer…

Let’s face it, there’s really only two ways which you can make money as an Internet Marketer (though you can focus on both if you want to) and those two things are 1) Free traffic, and 2) Paid traffic. Unfortunately however, if you’re working a full-time job, you don’t have the time to start a business with free traffic, or perhaps you don’t have the money to make it with paid traffic, so then, what do you do?

Well, this article will talk about the stepping stone between having a job (or being unemployed) and being a full-time Internet Marketer. I should note, while you can earn a complete, full-time income from just about all of these, if you’re really strapped for cash, jumping into one of these on the spot may not be the best idea. It’s better to start with one of these on the side, if you already have a job, or, if you already have some padding in the bank.

Freelance Copywriting…

First of all, Copywriting is an excellent way to earn a living before you turn into a full-time Internet Marketer. Why? Well, there’s a few reasons, but two main ones. The first is that Copywriters can charge some excellent fees, as long as you’re at least half-decent. I’ve met Copywriters that charge $2,500 per page of Copy. When I say page, I mean about 500-600 words. Obviously, it takes a while before you’re able to get to this point, and the people who charge this much, aren’t looking to become Internet Marketers, they probably intend to stick with freelance copywriting. Still, even earning a small fraction of this amount and writing a lot of copy can yield you high returns.

The second reason, is that Copywriting is absolutely essential to your success as an Internet Marketer, so, the reality is, you’re going to have to learn it anyways. If you want, you can even combine this skill with your graphic design skills, in order to create banner ads that will have high CTR’s. There are tons of ways to write copy, just find whatever works for you, and stick with it.

Graphic Design…

Speaking of graphic design, if you don’t want to learn how to be a Copywriter right away, but you already possess some graphic design ability (or even just general artistic ability) you can make money by creating graphics people. So many people either don’t have the time, or the skill to make graphics, so there’s usually plenty of work out there to be had. You can create logos, eBook covers, caricatures, salesletter graphics and more. There will literally always be a need for graphics, and while dealing with clients in this field can be a pain (or so I’ve heard) it can be used as a nice stepping stone to becoming a full time Internet Marketer.

So, where do you sell these services? You can sell them of course on sites like Fiverr.com, but, you can also sell them on the various Internet Marketing related forums. Selling them in these places will often get you connected to people who are in the industry, and quite possibly, already succeeding. Some good forums would be WarriorForum, DigitalPoint, BlackHatWorld, and WickedFire. There is also of course the crowdsourcing sites: 99 designs and Crowdspring. With these sites, people offer prizes for certain things, such as logo designs, and then the people on these sites post different designs, and the winner will get the prize. Typically prizes are about $300, but they can go up pretty high. Do enough of these, win enough of them, and you could basically earn a full-time income off of just these two sites. There’s steep competition, but those that make great graphics, and go the extra mile, tend to win fairly consistently.

Website Design…

One essential skill which you’ll need if you want to succeed with Internet Marketing, is web design. On the internet, your website (or websites) is your storefront. It’s the platform which you’ll use to sell your products and services, and promote products as an affiliate. So, why not get good at it beforehand, and make money in the process? If you already know how to do web design, then great, and if not, I recommend using W3Schools.com.

Oftentimes, people make out coding to be more difficult than it really is. You can learn the two basic languages of the web, HTML and CSS, within only a couple of weeks if you wan to, and without having to dedicate too much of your time to it either. Of course, some of the other languages, such as PHP, JavaScript, ASP.net (the scripting languages) are a bit harder, and require a bit more time, but, with just HTML and CSS, you can make pretty nice static websites. Throw JavaScript and PHP in there and you’ll know whatever you need to to make stunning websites. On top of that, a little graphic design skill will take you far. With CMS’s like Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal, website design has never been quicker and easier, and most people in the offline world still have no clue how to do it, so you can make a pretty nice sum of money doing only this.

Article Writing…

While most people have a sort of “love hate” relationship with Google, the fact of the matter is, all their “updates” work to make the search engine better, so that when people type in a query, the results they get back are MORE relevant, and less spammy… and they’ve done a pretty good job at this so far. Since the big Panda and Penguin updates, it’s been evident that Google is SERIOUSLY geared towards rewarding quality content, and punishing poor content. The days of having countless cheap articles written by someone in a 3rd-world country getting you page one rankings (so long as they have the proper keyword density) are over.

Because of these changes however, high quality content has never been more in demand, because people know that THAT’S what Google is demanding these days. If you want free traffic from Google, you’re going to have to pay for it. However, if you’re from a Native English speaking country, or your English is nearly perfect, and you want make money writing quality articles, nowadays, you can do just that, and it’ll be very profitable for you. Charging $2-$3 per 100 words is not uncommon, and while article writing can be a lot of work, it’s also very rewarding.

SEO…

While we’re on the subject of SEO, not only can you make money just writing articles, but SEO is very in-demand as well. The main thing with SEO, is knowing what the ever-changing Google algorithm is demanding in order to give out first page, and first position rankings. There’s really three main aspects of SEO: Keyword Research, On-Page SEO, and Off-Page SEO. Luckily, once you learn On-Page SEO and Keyword Research, you’ll be set for a while, because Google rarely changes these, however, what they want as far as Off-Page SEO (backlinks) is constantly changing.

Knowing what Google wants at any given moment, and then being able to build the proper backlinks to get the rankings that your clients wants is extremely valuable, and not that difficult to do, if you know what you’re doing. What I recommend, is to get a program like Page One Infiltrator, which will tell you at what’s working by showing you statistics for the top 10 sites in Google for any given keyword. Using this data, you can get a pretty good idea of what Google is looking for at the moment, and you’ll be able to build backlinks for your clients accordingly. Once your clients start to see the results, you’ll have just about endless work, so SEO is always a nice option.

Paid Traffic Campaign Management…

Another thing you’ll need to know to succeed as an Online marketer, is how to run paid traffic campaigns. Once you learn how to do this, you’ll be able to generate unlimited traffic to any offer you want, so long as you have the budget for it. This is important work, because businesses these days need to both brand, AND do direct response advertising, but don’t know how to do this themselves. If you want, you can be a full-service type company, that does everything from creating the banner ads, to managing the funds, and driving the traffic. You’ll also have to spend a great deal of time split-testing and improving things, but this kind of commitment can command a very high fee from the companies you work with. You also won’t need to land too many clients to earn a full-time income with this.

Arbitrage…

Arbitrage is basically selling something at one price, and buying it for another. So instead of the typical “Buy Low, Sell High” mantra, with Arbitrage, you do it the other way around “Sell High, Buy Low”. You can do this with several services. This is something you should do if you want to simply focus on getting new clients, while other people do the actual work. For example, if you had someone who would build a full backlink package for $150, and you sold it to someone for $300, then you would make what was in the middle, $150, while someone else did all the work. Not a bad deal.